R RHH AAP PSSOODDYY IINN BBLLUUEE N SHHWWIIN ERRS GGE E EAAR P RLL A WWI U ILLDD L PPOORRGGYY & WW & B HHI BES ITTEM SS EMAANN PIANO TRANSCRIPTIONS PRELUDES George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue • Seven Virtuoso Etudes • Grande Fantasy on Porgy and Bess • Three Preludes Earl Wild, Pianist The Composer and His Music George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershvin in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26, 1898, the second of four children. Apparently, none of the Gershwins had been musical and in his early boyhood George gave little indication of being an exception. When the Gershwin family acquired a piano in 1910, George started lessons at once. In 1912 George began studies with Charles Hambitzer. Hambitzer, a splendid musician, had a profound influence on the boy’s musical development. He introduced him to not only the classics but also to different modern styles and taught him harmony, theory, and instru- mentation. Popular music became a passion for the young Gershwin. In 1913 he wrote his first piece of real music, a song called “Since I Found You.” He began to study the music of Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern and soon found a job in Tin Pan Alley, as staff pianist and song plugger for Remick at fifteen dollars a week. He was only fifteen at the time, the youngest employee in the Alley. He was serious about his music, and in 1915 became a pupil of Edward Kilenyi in harmony, theory, and orchestration. By 1916 he had entered the professional ranks as a songwriter. His talent was beginning to attract notice. After two years at Remick’s Gershwin became rehearsal pianist for a Jerome Kern musical. Gershwin’s remarkable piano playing and improvisations made Kern sit up and take notice. “This young man,” Kern said, “is going places.” The year 1919 brought Gershwin his first successes. The song, “Swanee,” became a big hit. It was a best seller as sheet music with lyrics by Irving Caesar. Al Jolson’s performance sent record sales through the roof. Gershwin also saw his first musical comedy, La, La, Lucille, appear on Broadway. Between 1920 and 1924 Gershwin wrote the complete scores for five annual editions of the George White Scandals. Among – 2 – the songs he wrote were “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise,” and “Somebody Loves Me.” The orchestra leader, Paul Whiteman, heard Gershwin’s music and approached him to write an extended serious work for orchestra in a jazz idiom. The composition Gershwin finally produced for Whiteman was the Rhapsody in Blue, which was premiered in New York’s Aeolian Hall on February 12, 1924 (Lincoln’s Birthday). It became an overwhelming success. The next day several critics called it one of the most significant works in twentieth century music. It also made Gershwin a wealthy man, as well as a composer who had won the admi- ration of the entire world. He maintained his position as one of America’s most significant musical figures with a succession of serious com- positions in which popular American styles and idioms were skillfully combined with the forms, techniques, and resources of serious music. On December 3, 1925 he intro- duced his Piano Concerto in F at Carnegie Hall. This was followed by his tone poem, An American in Paris (1928), first performed by the New York Philharmonic. The Second Rhapsody (1932) was premiered by the Boston Symphony. He then wrote the Cuban Overture (1932), Variations on I Got Rhythm (1934), and the opera, Porgy and Bess, which had its world premiere in Boston on September 30, 1935. As a popu- lar composer, Gershwin continued writing scores for the Broadway stage and the Hollywood screen. In 1924 he wrote the music for Lady Be Good, starring Fred and Adele Astaire. In Lady Be Good, Gershwin also found a distinguished and permanent collaborator in his brother, Ira, who, from that time on, provided brilliant lyrics for Gershwin’s music. A string of successful Broadway productions followed, including Funny Face (1927), Strike Up the Band (1930), Girl Crazy (1930), Of Thee I Sing (1931), Let ‘Em Eat Cake (1933), and Pardon My English (1933). After 1935 Gershwin wrote exclusively for motion pictures. He and Ira moved to Hollywood in 1936. In 1937 came Damsel in Distress and Shall We Dance, both starring Fred Astaire; and in 1938, the Goldwyn Follies. While working on the Goldwyn Follies, Gershwin suffered a physical collapse. On July 9, 1937, he was taken to the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for brain surgery. The operation revealed a cystic degeneration of a tumor on a part of the brain that could not be touched. He died in the hospital on the morning of July 11, 1937. – 3 – After Gershwin’s death a screen biography was pro- duced, Rhapsody in Blue (1945), with Robert Alda play- ing the composer. And six years later, An American in Paris, starring Gene Kelly, was filmed with several Gershwin favorites and the tone poem that gave the film its title and was used as the background music for an elaborate dance sequence. An American in Paris received the Academy Award in 1951 as the best motion picture of the year. Like all great successes, the success of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was unpredictable. The Rhapsody was one of many pieces on Paul Whiteman’s concert pro- gram in New York on the afternoon of February 12, 1924. The concert was announced as “an experiment in modern music.” Paul Whiteman asked the twenty-five- year-old Gershwin to write a piece for this concert, but Gershwin was busy with his current revue, Sweet Little Devil, and hesitated to accept, until he read in the New York Herald-Tribune that he, Gershwin, was at work on a symphony! This garbled report made Gershwin think of writing something more ambitious than just a short jazz piece. Gershwin told the story of the Rhapsody to his friend and biographer, Isaac Goldberg: “Suddenly an idea occurred to me. There had been so much chatter about the limitations of jazz... Jazz, they said, had to be in strict time. It had to cling to dance rhythms. I resolved, if possible, to kill that misconception with one sturdy blow. Inspired by this aim, I set to work composing with unwonted rapidity. No set plan was in my mind — no struc- ture to which my music would conform. The Rhapsody, as you see, began as a purpose, not a plan... At this stage of the piece, I was summoned to Boston for the premiere of Sweet Little Devil. I had already done some work on the Rhapsody. It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty-bang that is often so stimulating to a composer... I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise. And there I sud- denly heard — and even saw on paper — the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end... as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America.” The date of completion of the score is marked on the manuscript: January 7, 1924. And as the saying goes, the rest is history. The Rhapsody in Blue is still today, Gershwin’s most performed work, recognized and loved world wide as one of the great master- pieces of the 20th century. – 4 – In the spring of 1932, George Gershwin published some piano arrangements of his own songs, reminding us in the preface that “sheet music, as ordinarily printed for mass sales, is arranged with an eye to simplicity.” One could hardly call these arrangements “simple” — they were written for Gershwin’s own enjoyment and definitely required enough technique to do something more than play the sheet music. In transcribing seven of Gershwin’s best known songs, Earl Wild created dazzling concert etudes from these songs. These are not mere showpieces, but musical fantasias in the tradition of Franz Liszt. The first of these is The Man I Love. The song was originally dropped from Lady Be Good (1924) and inserted into Strike Up the Band (1927). It then made phantom appearances in Rosalie (1928), eventu- ally becoming one of Gershwin’s most famous songs in performances at dance halls, clubs and hotels. I Got Rhythm was composed for the 1930 show Girl Crazy (where it was introduced by Ethel Merman, making her Broadway debut). In 1934 it was used as the theme in his Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for piano and orchestra. Embraceable You is also from Girl Crazy. Fascinatin’ Rhythm was one of the sensa- tions of the 1924 Broadway production of Lady Be Good. Somebody Loves Me is one of Gershwin’s songs with words by Buddy De Sylva (before Gershwin teamed up with his brother Ira). It was the hit of George White’s Scandals of 1924. Liza was a minstrel pastiche danced by Ruby Keeler in Show Girl (1929). Lady, Be Good was the title song of a 1924 musical which first established the team of the Gershwin brothers. Gershwin’s folk opera, Porgy and Bess is set in the waterfront district of Charleston, South Carolina. It deals with people chiefly engaged in fishing, cotton picking, peddling and just plain honest living. Catfish Row is the name given to the squalid, brawling, con- gested quarter they call home. According to Sydney Beck (the annotator for the original New York produc- tion) writes: “Catfish Row responds to a deep and irre- sistible stream of movement, color and sound, out of which the story flows as spontaneously and as power- fully as life itself... The tale centers around the crippled, sex-starved Porgy, the two-timin’ trollop, Bess, the brutal stevedore, Crown — proud of his brawn and physical prowess — and wily, high-steppin’ Sporting’ Life, visi- tor from New York’s Harlem, selling dope and liquor Helen Hayes, Paul Whiteman and Earl Wild – 5 – to Catfish Row.” In his extended 1976 fantasy on themes from the opera, Earl Wild basically follows the action of the opera, scrupulously leaving Gershwin’s rhythmic settings intact.